Monthly Archives: October 2015

Rad is, unquestionably, the single most clichéd movie I have ever had the privilege of suffering through. If Rad wasn’t shot in color, I would have assumed this was, in fact, the very first movie ever made. It isn’t, though, Rad is just the most derivative film anyone could possibly make.

THE PLOT~ When a secret cabal of old, wealthy, white men (oh no!) get together to launch a BMX track based money making scheme, they find their “sure thing” investment dashed by a determined local boy named Cru, who will stop at nothing to enter the race, even though he is horribly, nightmarishly deformed.

He’s hideous…

The bad guys bring with them a whole team of cronies, including the current BMX world champion (some blonde uber-douche called “Bart,”) and two twin brothers who dress like G.I. Joe villains.

There they are.

Also a member of Team Mongoose (the bad guys) is the implausibly pretty Christian (Played by Lori Loughlin), who has become disenchanted with her team’s off the charts douchebaggary, and wastes no time defecting to Team Rad (the good guys). For some reason, she immediately develops a romantic interest in the hellishly disfigured Cru, suggesting that she herself is somehow mentally ill.

That’s exactly what Freddy Kruger would look like after a bunch of botox.

From there it’s just neat bike tricks and old people trying to keep the youth down. Except for all the old people who are really nice. So really, it’s only like, a handful of old people that suck in Rad. Otherwise, most people are cool.

Rad isn’t well done no matter what angle you look at it from. Anytime you’re flying high on the wings of nostalgia and really need a reality check, pop RAD into your VCR and prepare to be reminded of just what an intellectual gas chamber the 1980’s really were. This turkey bumbles and sucks to and fro, back and forth, all the live long day. And that kid they cast as the lead…

It’s like one of those Team America Marionettes made a wish to be a real boy…

Still, it is probably the best movie about BMX bikes ever made, for whatever that’s worth. It certainly beats BMX Bandits, in my opinion, and is likely the closest thing the bike world ever got to their very own Thrashin’. If you were a BMX kid in the 80’s, you probably loved this film, and that was not wrong of you.

He looks like a trout after a fatal overdose of sleeping pills.

It’s not even necessarily wrong to love Rad now. It sucks, you need to admit that, but nearly everything we love about the 80’s sucked at least a little bit. Somewhere amongst all the stupid, this thing winds up being somewhat lovable, and even a little bit fun.

That’s exactly what Earthworm Jim would look like if he were real.

Of course, Rad also features a sequence in which the bad guys hog the dance floor of the local high school with an elaborately choreographed dance routine, which is so staggeringly awful that I was embarrassed to actually see it with my own eyes.

Plus, where was the Vatican on this one? Are they just not condemning anything anymore? Someone needed to do something about this.

Then things go from unthinkably bad to immeasurably worse when Cru and Christian retaliate against Team Mongoose by wowing students and faculty alike with an impromptu freestyle tandem bike dancing routine of their very own.

I included these pictures because who would believe me otherwise?

Nothing could be more damming in a film review than photographic evidence of a tandem bike dancing routine, so clearly, we have proven beyond dispute that Rad is 90 minutes of utter humiliation and gonzo dog shit that the human race really didn’t need to add to our rap sheet, but as bad as all that is, here’s where I get real with you for a second… We have to remember that no matter what, at the end of the day, this is a film from the 1980’s… It’s about BMX racing, and it’s called RAD. Rad for fuck’s sake! Let’s just face the facts… There will always be an audience for this film. It has irony locked in a full nelson for all eternity, and the many heinous shortcomings I’ve outlined in the above text will actually keep Rad alive for decades to come.

The first thing you need to know about The Big Bossis that it’s basically The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, but with Kung Fu. Yeah, fucking awesome.

THE PLOT~ Somewhere in China, where Bruce Lee is presumably born and raised, on the playground is where he spends most of his days, chillin’ out, maxin’, realaxin’ all cool, and all practicing to get really good at Kung Fu, when a couple of guys (who were up to no good,) Begin to make trouble in his neighborhood. He gets in one little fight and his mom get’s scared, and says “You’re moving with your uncle to a more rural region of China!”

What’s the difference?!

Rather than shacking up with a Chinese Uncle Phil, Bruce is taken to his new home, a run down flop house full of dudes, all of whom are Bruce’s new pals, and who could be seen as Chinese versions of Jazzy Jeff, Carlton, and whatever their Butler’s name was. Bruce’s new buddies get him a job working at some sort of ice factory, and guess what? The dude who owns it also is a big drug trafficker. This is where the film takes it’s one and only departure from the saga of the Fresh Prince, rather than stay out of trouble, Bruce ends up locked in a brutal kung fu death match with a series of thugs, which culminates with a show down with the Big Boss himself. But other than that it’s straight up Fresh Prince, they just traded the martial arts for sick rhymes.

The Big Boss is not Bruce’s best film, but dammit, it’s a Bruce Lee film. That carries weight, son! It’s highly entertaining, and although Bruce isn’t quite at his peak at this point, there are plenty of little moments nestled throughout the picture that illustrate just why this guy was so special. Naturally, the fighting is first rate, but for me, the stuff I appreciate the most is when Bruce ISN’T shrieking like a puma and kicking people in the throat. His personality shines through in every minute detail of his performance, and this is a man who was inarguably born for motion pictures. These movies aren’t very elaborate when you stick them under the microscope, but they’re rewarding in a way that is hard to pinpoint, and it almost has to be Lee that makes that happen.

Plus, check out the dude in the maroon shirt- it’s Lam Ching-Ying!

So, The Big Boss is a classic on the strength of Lee’s performance, where it may have been a rather forgettable affair without him. We, as a species, owe this man a lot. He did a lot more for humanity than prove that pixie cuts and high-waisted pants are actually super bad ass. The Big Boss may not be his best movie, but it’s still a great contribution to pop culture from a man who had a tragically short resumé, but who still managed to make an enormous impact.

Clocking in at just over an hour, and with a reported budget of only $24,500, Blood Feast is the achievement that would forever enshrine Herschell Gordon Lewis as a name revered amongst horror aficionados the world over. While on first inspection, the lion’s share of this film sucks like friggin’ crazy, it actually can’t be overstated how ahead of it’s time Blood Feast really was. Often cited as the first ever legitimate gore film, this movie began a period of Lewis’ professional life where he would pioneer a new level of blood and guts based exploitation, and would eventually earn the honorary title “The Godfather of Gore.” Today, Blood Feast is over 50 years old, and is still far gnarlier and more explicit than most modern horror films. Time to step up your game, Hollywood.

THE PLOT~ Fuad Ramses, caterer, religious fanatic and serial teenage girl dismemberer, opens up a highly regarded catering business in what appears to be a sexless episode of Mad Men. Knowing that America is the land of religious freedom, he takes advantage of his newly acquired civil liberties and beings to horribly mutilate the shit out of young women- you know- for Ishtar. Can the police stop him before he finishes doing whatever the hell it is he’s trying to achieve? Hell yeah, but first a bunch of girls get the shit murdered out of them, and we watch it all in off-puttingly drawn out sequences of next-level motion picture violence.

How violent and bloody is Blood Feast? Well, today, the vilest, more despicable low budget splat merchants still use this as a benchmark, and I imagine John Waters probably thought it was the best thing ever when he was 16. So, it’s pretty bad.

Lewis often said that he considered himself a business man, not an artist, so he viewed his motion picture work as an entirely commercial endevour. Kudos for honesty, but this attitude is reflected in every aspect of Blood Feast’s production, this is an artless, by the numbers motion picture that put very little energy into appeasing film theorists. Start to finish, Blood Feast is plagued with boring compositions, “just enough to get it done” dialog, horrendous acting, and thick, red acrylic paint substituting for blood. All of this juxtaposed against the disturbingly retro quaintness of the early 1960’s makes this film feel like some form of Satanic kitch, like a 1950’s themed burger joint operated by Jason Voorhees. The weird thing is that I wouldn’t want it any other way, if the acting were actually good, it would probably be really, really disturbing. Blood Feast is definitely a “bad” film if you hold it up to any artistic scrutiny, but it just feels so right. This is the humble birth of gore cinema, if it didn’t sort of suck, wouldn’t that just feel inappropriate somehow?

Additionally, time has been very kind to Blood Feast. The novelty of an early 1960’s gore film existing at all is tremendous, but its clumsy production, lousy story, and prehistoric tropes make the film markedly more fun today than it has ever been before, by all accounts, this is a movie that will continue to gain entertaining value as it becomes more and more antiquated. There’s just so much to laugh at! In the movie, one of our would-be mutilation victims is dating a policeman, who appears to be in his late 40’s- and that’s weird, because I think she’s in high school. Also, at the end of the picture, our bad guy dies in exactly the same way that The Shredder does in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, so I really want to believe that Eastman and Laird owned a battered VHS copy of Blood Feast back in the 80’s. Really, I want that to be true.

There’s really no argument to be had for Blood Feast’s artistic merit. It wasn’t better than other gore films, it was just “first,” but that’s still important. At the end of the day, people don’t like Lewis’ output for its artistic merit anyway, and Blood Feast is a fun movie that deserves the worship it receives.

The world of No Holds Barred is the sort of universe that professional wrestling really wants you to believe exists just outside the ring. It’s a place where everything is simple, no one is intelligent, and wrestling is really, really important. How can we ever hope to understand No Holds Barred? Who was this thing even made for? It feels far too sexual to be a kid’s movie (Even by hornball ’89 standards,), yet at the same time, what adult could enjoy something so juvenile? How seriously are we even supposed to take this damn thing? I just can’t say. Frankly, I don’t *get* wrestling. If you’re a fan, be advised… This review may peeve you.

“Uh, Slam into a slim jim, man. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

The Plot~Hulk Hogan plays Rip, the most captivating and popular professional wrestler in the known world, which is a much bigger deal in this movie than it would be in real life. Not only does Rip dominate timeslots when he enters the arena, he’s also a swell guy, widely known for his honesty, reliability, appreciation of fine cuisine, and unwavering moral compass. He even speaks French! Nietzsche’s Ubermensch has arrived, and he wears short shorts and a spandex bandana on the regular.

That’s his trademark hand gesture thing he does all the time.

However, there’s trouble looming just out of view for poor Rip and his loved ones- shady rival television executive Brell is looking to topple Rip in the ratings by any means necessary. In order to do so, our villain founds an ultra-violent, unregulated television brawl fest eloquently named “The Battle of the Tough Guys,” in order to find a champion capable of taking Rip down. His champion comes in the form of a homicidal nightmare named Zeus, played by Tommy Lister, a cross-eyed freak show who will stop at nothing to beat people up, probably because he had a bad childhood. That’s just me speculating. Something’s wrong with him for sure, though. So, then some more nonsense happens, until the movie is finally over and you can go do something else, like walk the dog, or make dinner, or whatever. Your time is yours to do with as you please, really.

I once heard Michael Caine make the comparison that acting on stage is like surgery with a scalpel, but acting on film is like surgery with a laser. The point being, of course, that when you’re doing live theater, you have to convey your message all the way to the back of the room. On film, you’re free to be much more precise- less is more! You can emote with even the slightest flutter of an eyelid while in close up, and the impact you have on the audience is greatly amplified. I would wager, if we follow this metaphor through to completion, that acting in a professional wrestling ring would then be more like performing surgery with a friggin’ battle axe, or perhaps some sort of cartoon chainsaw. Hulk Hogan clearly did very well for himself winning the hearts of his audience from inside the ring, but “over the top clown” is all he knows, and it’s just not suitable for film. The Hulkster is about as subtle as a Technicolor clown riding a motorcycle through a frame of Schindler’s List, and watching him for 90 minutes is a chore. 85% of his dialogue is just strained grunting, and somehow the scene where he cries by his little brother’s hospital bed comes off as being less believable than the scene where he takes down two armed robbers by throwing pies at them. Oh, to live in the world of No Holds Barred…

Most of the other actors are fine, though, Tommy Lister especially is perfect as the stumbling, murderous Zeus. It’s not a demanding role, but he does it well- Lister would later go on to have small, but memorable roles in everything from Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight! Not too shabby. Hulk Hogan, on the other hand, would go on to land a starring role in an ethnic slur laden sex tape that would end his career and utterly demolish his legacy forever, but he still probably has more money than all of us, because there is no justice in the universe.

No Holds Barred is a bad movie. I’ve learned that fans of professional wrestling do hold a certain reverence and affection for the film, and that is to be expected, but for the rest of us, I calls ’em likes I sees ’em. This movie is a horrifyingly chauvinistic, embarrassingly simple string of clichés, festooned with sweaty men, and slapped together sloppily. You absolutely have to meet it more than half way in order for the narrative to hold together, because it under the slightest level of scrutiny it collapses like France in a fistfight, and the movie’s many attempts to foster some sort of emotional reaction out of the audience are handled with all the slyness and cunning of a North Korean propaganda minister.

But…

it does have two things going for it: It has the single most terrifying public restroom I’ve ever seen on film, and also, it has the now famous “Dookie Sequence,” which I’ve included here:

There was a period of time spanning from 1960-something all the way up into the 1980’s when Italy and Spain were cranking out THE greatest movies on the planet, bar none. Italy especially was on a hot streak at that time, and the United States wasn’t even in third place. This was a true golden age for Euro-horror, and that twenty year window gave us near innumerable gruesome classics, many of which remain largely unappreciated by the American mainstream (get on it, guys). Among the bumper crop of European made creep ass masterpieces I am speaking of, Dario Argento’s Suspiriastands out as being among the very best. Routinely singled out as one of the greatest horror films of all time, and lovingly revered by horror enthusiasts and cinema snobs alike, Suspiria is very likely Argento’s single greatest work. This movie rules, bro.

THE PLOT~ A young American woman travels to Germany where she has enrolled in a prestigious school of dance, only to immediately face mysterious and frightening goings on constantly from the moment she steps off the plane. After doing the absolute minimum amount of independent investigation required to learn absolutely anything, she discovers that her new school/home was actually founded by a coven of malicious witches, and for some reason, she doesn’t haul ass back to America immediately. It stands to reason that she therefore deserves what she has coming to her. Things get freaky.

What the hell is that thing?

So, clearly, the plot isn’t anything to write home about, but the execution is phenomenal. Suspiria is wild and engrossing, it’s dreamy and unnerving, and, if viewed under the proper circumstances (i.e. not streamed off of fucking Youtube or whatever) Suspiria is totally and completely overwhelming. The score is a big part of what makes everything work, Suspiria’s soundtrack is a massive, atmospheric masterwork by Italian synth-rock band Goblin, themselves responsible for 99% of Italy’s soundtracks in the 70’s and 80’s. The group turns in their best work ever for this film, and the Suspiria theme song specifically is probably the single greatest piece of music the band ever recorded. That’s all well and good, but what really counts is how how Argento cuts this music to picture; and this ends up being an invaluable asset to the overall potency of the work. These songs are LOUD, eerie, uncomfortable, and constant, which is exactly what this film needs, because equal care has been paid to Suspiria’s visuals. This movie displays the most obsessively precise and deliberate visual experience ever seen in an Italian horror film, ever. Suspiria’s brilliant, but rigidly structure visuals are more in league with what you see in Wes Anderson’s catalog than anything else.

Harhar, hey, Dario! Who does Bill Murray play in this one- Oh… Oh hell….

Suspiria is certainly not the goriest film to have come out of the Euro-Horror wave of the 1970’s, not by a long shot, but it does have it’s share of blood and guts. It’s also fairly spooky from time to time. The tagline spoken toward the end of the trailer states that “The only thing more terrifying than the last twelve minutes of Suspiria… are the first 92…” I always hated that. So, what, it’s less scary at the end? Wouldn’t that really be about the last thing a horror movie should aim for? Well, don’t worry, the end of this film is by far the scariest part, but that shouldn’t matter much, since humanity has been so freaking desensitized by now anyway. This thing does pack a punch, but it’s a 1977 punch, so you might not even notice.

Jazz hands!

Really, if I was going to try and anticipate what sort of complaints you may hear from a first time Suspiria watcher, I would imagine that all or most of these criticisms would be directly attributed to the fact that this film is Italian, and was made in the 1970’s. Italian films from the 1970’s have some traits that today’s more mainstream movie goer may not find that appetizing. Sometimes, the pacing can feel slow, due to our rapidly deteriorating attention spans, and this can make these films seem boring to the X-Box addled Millennial. Additionally, like nearly every single European film from this era, there was no on set sound recordist for Suspiria, and so all of the audio, dialogue included, was recorded in post. Often, the voice actors, especially for English dubs, don’t do the original actors any favors, and to some people, this can make it hard to take a movie seriously. This is a true pity, because it was a nearly universal practice across Europe in that day and age, and if you can’t get over that, you’re going to miss out on a huge library of rad movies.

There are a lot of Americans who truly love horror films, but who have had minimal exposure to the European classics of yesteryear. If that describes you, and you’re open, my recommendation isn’t just that you watch Suspiria, but also that you watch Suspiria under the proper conditions. This is a movie that was made before home video and online streaming was a game-changing fact of life. This movie was designed to be experienced big, loud, and in the dark. While it’s probably not possible for you to catch a showing of this at your nearby Regal Cinemas, at the very least, turn off your lights, turn the volume up, and pay attention. Suspiria deserves that courtesy, and in the end, the experience will be rewarding.